Babyhead Corona
Slick night, late light summer rain on the streets.
Aloysius leaned his head back against the bus window, eyes looking with x-ray vision at nothing through the ceiling.
The gun was in his bag, still lashed against cardboard with plastic zipties. “Real Trooper Laser Gun” the package said, in bright letters. Space letters, letters from the frontlines of some distant galaxy, maybe. Or letters made in Photoshop by some packaging designer who wanted to make kids buy the gun shaped plastic that made Real Lights and Sounds.
Aloysius wasn’t sure how they knew. What the Real Lights and Sounds of a Real Trooper Laser gun would be, anyway. How would they?
Insider knowledge. Or maybe guessing.
He was tired from shopping, and his brain was going scatterthought freerange on him.
He turned his head to look out the bus’s big front windows as it slowed to a stop. More passengers to carry from here to wherever.
There was a man up the street. Heavy coat, cap on backwards. Baby over his shoulder; he was giving it a gentle rock-a-by in the middle of the street.
Strange, Aloysius thought. That a man should be comforting a baby there. And that baby looked strange too, oddly stiff. Unnervingly so. The bus creaked forward again and he was prepared to forget about man and child.
But then he felt the tingle across the curve of his skull, and he tasted copper in his mouth. Burnt pennies on his tongue. He was reaching for the bag and the gun inside before he knew it.
Babyhead corona brightflare, and the burnt pennies leapt off his and took over his world. The other passengers didn’t taste, didn’t see the second corona spring to life on the street and snake like brushfire towards the front of the bus.
They didn’t see it (couldn’t) , but they felt the bus shake and heard the metal and rubber skreechsqueal of the right front tire being torn apart.
Aloysius broke the spacegun free of its cardboard and ziptie prison.
Now it was even. Kid with dolly versus kid with raygun. Ready steady go.
He was off the bus before the second corona ripped it apart. It was a close thing, and as he threw himself forward, something metal slisssshed against the back of his jacket. At home, he’d find a foot long gully there that was a hair from being in his skin.
Babyhead coronaflare out of the corner of his eye, and he twisted in midair. Aimed his plastic toy gun and pulled the trigger.
Lights and sounds. Lights and sounds and something else. Something that started between his eyes, hot, and flew out the orange tipped barrel even hotter.
No second corona. Babyflare Man moved an invisible lance burntpunched a penny sized hole through the storefront behind him. Burnt pennies in the air.
Babyflare Man spun to face the next shot, the baby held in front of him. Less like a shield, more like a talisman. Doublebright corona, and Aloysius didn’t have time to fire as he ran. Ran like hell, which was opening up in the sidewalk where he had just stood.
Hell was following him down the sidewalk. He could feel the heat nipping at his back as it chewed up the sidewalk.
He turned towards it, aimed down, moved up as he felt the heat go from betweeneyes to out the gun. Again, where he stood disappeared in a flare.
Hangtime felt like forever. He saw the baby coming up to face him. Like the cartoon monkey raising the once and future lion king, but with a brighter roar and a smarter monkey.
They were both aiming as he fell. But there was less a pause between triggerpull and headhot than there was between babyhead corona and flare consumption.
Gone babyhead gone.
Landing was hard, but easier than the alternative.
Babyflare Man looked down at the dead weapon in his hands. Blood ran down his face, from where a tilt of the neck had just barely saved his own head from sharing the same loss as his weapon.
“Not a bad shot…Kid A,” he said, in the reedy, sad voice of a man who still plays with dolls at his age.
The former Kid A picked himself up. Painfully; he’d ache in the morning for falling on blacktop.
“It’s Aloysius now,” he said, and aimed again, in case he had need for lights and sounds and a quick end for his sudden opponent.
“Ah.”
“And you?”
“Now or then?” Babyflare Man said, his voice a kind of creepy playful. He was a thin, pasty man. Too much time inside thinking bad thoughts, not enough outside trying to avoid bits of violent weirdness like this. Not like Aloysius.
“Either.”
“I was Kid W. Then and now, even without my toy and youth.”
“You still have your life if you still have some running in you,” Aloysius said. He kept his voice reasonable, and reasonably hard besides.
W looked surprised, for the brief second before he ran off…somewhere that didn’t matter much, to a sore man who hadn’t really wanted to kill him anyhow.
Aloysius limped off, to ditch his own toy and find another bus; one that hopefully faced less opposition.
At home, he’d pick out another unopened toy gun for tomorrow. Just in case.
